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| Mosaic, Launched April 23, 1993 The Original World Wide Web Browser |
To that I say hearty "No!" We must keep net neutrality first and foremost in everyone's mind by reminding people there is only one World Wide Web and only one Internet. We have an agenda here people!
So please, keep do capitalizing the words "Internet" and "Web". Screw the AP.
If the AP really wants to be helpful with a style guide then perhaps they can focus on corporate networks.
Even at home we say "home network" or "LAN" (local area network) to avoid the "internet" cognitive sounding "intranet".
And it is not just me saying this, but the inventers as well. The Web, it was invented and freely given to the world by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN. Sir Tim has always emphasized that it should be both unique and world-wide, hence the proper name "the World Wide Web".
Here is his authoritative explanation:
Q: How in fact do you spell World Wide Web?
A: It should be spelled as three separate words, so that its acronym is three separate "W"s. There are no hyphens. Yes, I know that it has in some places been spelled with a hyphen but the official way is without. Yes, I know that "worldwide" is a word in the dictionary, but World Wide Web is three words. I use "Web" with a capital W to indicate that it is an abbreviation for "World Wide Web". Hence, "What a tangled web he wove on his Web site!". Often, WWW is written and read as W3, which is quicker to say. In particular, the World Wide Web consortium is W3C, never WWWC.
Q: Why did you call it WWW?
A: Looking for a name for a global hypertext system, an essential element I wanted to stress was its decentralized form allowing anything to link to anything.
So, AP, if you really want to be helpful then as a style guide please come out and say that you will no longer use the word "intranet", but "LAN"?
Also, AP, just get rid of the confusing sounding "inter" and "intra" altogether and replace "intra" with something visually and audibly distinguishable, like say "bob". No more "intra-state" commerce. We'll now have "bob-commerce", thank you very much.
Also, AP, could you also in your style guide kill of the plural of index, "indices". The advent of databases has shown how ineffectual the word "indices" is. Time to replace the use of the word "indices" with "indexes'.
To whit, killing of "intranet" and "indices" would be useful, but lower case of unique items is not. Making the Internet and the Web lower case undermines the original intent of these words: to purposefully and forever remain unique.
Cheers!
-Mybrid Wonderful
